


the dice was loaded from the start

by eat_crow



Series: eat_crow's week of self indulgence [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28986258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eat_crow/pseuds/eat_crow
Summary: Merlin is Arthur's best friend. Arthur also happens to be completely head over heels for him.Merlin takes the joint from Arthur's hand and his hand slips over Arthur's and Arthur's fingernails tingle, up into the joints of his knuckles. He watches with wide eyes as Merlin raises it to his lips, and his chest is all anxious and excited as he thinks that his lips were just on that lumpy rolled up piece of paper and it's about to touch Merlin's lips and, oh, it's almost like a kiss, kind of, and his eyes are so heavy and his cheeks are pinched from how long he's been dazedly smiling and he's imagining what it's like to be that joint, how nice it must be.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: eat_crow's week of self indulgence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2126211
Comments: 23
Kudos: 101





	the dice was loaded from the start

**Author's Note:**

> just a good old fashioned high school au with major pining and a little bit of angst because falling in love with your best friend is hard. this is a prequel to "sing the streets a serenade," but you don't have to read it first to understand - it's linked in the end notes.

_"Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start_   
_And I bet, and you exploded into my heart_   
_And I forget, I forget the movie song_   
_When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet?"_

Merlin sits slumped in the hard plastic office chair. His arms are crossed over his chest, his throbbing hands tucked into his arm pits and his busted lip turned down in a frown. Next to him is Arthur Pendragon. His letterman jacket is thrown onto the chair beside him, overtop his backpack. One of his nostrils is plugged with a tissue. He holds his swollen eyelids apart as he drips contact solution into his bloodshot eye. He blinks hard, shakes his head, and sniffs.

He catches Merlin in his peripheral and laughs.

“You’re so dead,” he says. “Picking a fight with me like that, do you have any idea who my father is?”

“I don’t give one fuck who your father is,” Merlin snaps back, tensing his shoulders and sinking down further in his seat. “He could be the king of England for all I care, I still would have hit you.” Arthur quirks an eyebrow.

“Do you really mean that?”

“Of course I do. I can’t stand a bully.”

“I am _not_ a bully,” Arthur says. His voice is grave. Merlin manages to glare.

“Oh, please. You’re like an 80’s high school movie villain, terrorizing that underclassman with your mates.” Arthur rolls his eyes, looking firmly off to the side.

“Lighten up, it was just for a laugh," he says.

“I didn’t see him laughing,” Merlin remarks. Arthur opens his mouth to reply, but stops, pauses to think, then shifts so he sits facing away. He doesn’t say anything more. Merlin stares at the wall.

The phone on the secretary’s desk rings one, two times before she picks it up. She cradles it between her cheek and shoulder while she finishes typing something on her ancient computer. She hums in acknowledgement, says _yes sir_ , and sets the phone back in the cradle.

“Arthur, he’s ready for you, dear,” she says. Arthur pulls the bloody tissue from his nose as he stands and drops it in the wastebasket beside her desk.

“Thank you, Mary,” he answers, sickly sweet and polite. He puts his hand on the door handle, looks over his shoulder with an odd expression on his face, and then turns the handle. He’s quick to disappear into the headmaster’s office.

Merlin watches the clock while Arthur is inside. It takes ten minutes of the second handle tick, tock, tick, tock, ticking until Arthur comes back. His face is red, and he keeps his eyes on the ground. He collects his jacket and throws it over his arm. He slings his backpack over his shoulder. Arthur meets Merlin’s gaze for a fraction of a second.

“You’re lucky,” is what he says, grit out between his teeth, before sulking out of the administration room and into the main hallway. Merlin watches his back with a quizzical nudge between his eyes.

“Merlin, you can go on in,” the secretary says, and he flexes his jaw as he stands. Arthur gave as good as he got - arguably better, because Arthur was one of those athletic blokes with a shelf of trophies and Merlin was just a scrawny asshole with a temper. 

The headmaster sits with his hands clasped over his desk when Merlin walks in. His smile is impersonably warm, like he doesn’t actually wish to be as polite as he’s being.

“Please, take a seat,” he says, and Merlin does. 

The nameplate on his desk reads _Uther Pendragon_.

Pendragon.

Merlin looks at a picture frame on the wall. His stomach drops. There is Arthur, in a suit and tie, standing next to a dark haired girl in a dark green velvet dress. Arthur is giving the camera a tight lipped smile. The girl, holding a painted canvas with a medal hanging from the corner, is looking off to the side as if in the middle of an eye roll.

“Arthur is your son,” Merlin says quietly.

“Yes,” Uther says, with equal discomfort. “And he’s told me everything.”

Merlin sinks in his seat with his face hidden behind his hands. _Shit. Shit shit shit._ He’s going to get expelled. He’s going to have to go to some reformatory school across the country because he’s an idiot that can’t shake the chip off his shoulder.

“Mr. Pendragon, I--”

“I’d like to apologize on his behalf.”

Merlin stops. He spreads his fingers to peek through them.

“What?”

“Arthur is a good boy, you know. He’s not one to start fights.”

That much is true - because Merlin most _certainly_ threw the first punch. 

“You were right to defend yourself,” Uther continues, “And, rest assured, he will be dealt with.”

“Right,” Merlin says. He presses his tongue against the split in his lip. The skin is oddly soft there, and it tastes of metal and it stings. “I’m… not sure I understand-- am I in trouble?”

“Far from it,” Uther assures. All the tension leaves him in one breath. Merlin stretches his legs out as he relaxes. “I merely wished to know if I could rely on your,” he gesticulates, “discretion.”

“My discretion,” he parrots. “Like, not pressing charges?”

“I suppose if you want to word it that way,” Uther says, his smile strained, clearly frustrated at having to spoon feed the concept. 

“Oh.” Merlin looks at the picture again. He shrugs. “Okay.”

“‘Okay’?”

“Yeah, okay. As long as I’m not in trouble.” He sniffs. He points his thumb to the door. “Can I go?”

Uther blinks at him.

“You… are excused,” he says haltingly. Merlin claps.

“Awesome,” he says, and swings out of his seat. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Pendragon.”

“Have a nice day,” Uther says, still confused, and organizes a stack of papers to sort through at a later date. Merlin takes a peppermint from the bowl on Mary’s desk and gives her a wide smile. Getting away with something will improve anyone’s mood.

  
  


Arthur watches the skateboarder out of the corner of his eyes as he closes distance on the stop sign. It doesn’t take him long to recognize the kid as Merlin, swallowed by a brown leather jacket and his ratty backpack hanging low on his back. Arthur lowers the volume of his music. Merlin, on the other side of the road, stops at the cross. Arthur rolls down his window.

“Hey!” He calls out, and Merlin almost startles out of his skin. “Do a flip!”

Merlin stares at him for a moment. Then, the oddest thing happens. He actually does it. He jumps, kicks the board, and flips it over end. He even sticks the landing. It must have been a surprise to Merlin as well, because he breaks into laughter as he wobbles for balance.

Arthur claps for him. Merlin takes a bow. There’s no one behind him when he glances in the rearview, so Arthur puts his car in park and leans out of the window.

“Where are you headed?”

“The Unicorn,” Merlin says. He fiddles with the hanging straps of his backpack.

“The pizza place?”

“Yeah,” Merlin laughs, “that one. I work there.”

“That’s over five miles away,” Arthur says. Merlin shrugs. Arthur looks in the rearview one more time, then unlocks his doors. “Come on,” he says, and waves him closer, “get in.”

Merlin doesn’t get in. He looks at Arthur like he’s crazy.

“First you take the fall for our fight, and now you’re trying to drive me places?” He narrows his eyes. “Are you going to kill me?”

“What? No!” Arthur shifts in his seat and holds the steering wheel tight in both hands. “I was thinking about what you said - about how I was a bully.” He flexes his fingers. Presses his lips together. “If what I do makes me seem like a bad person, then-- well, clearly, I’m a bit of a dickhead.”

Merlin snorts. Arthur ignores him.

“I’d like to be a better person,” he says. “May as well start with you.” He bites the inside of his cheek. Merlin sticks his hands in his pockets, an easy kind of smile on his face. “So, come on. Get in.”

“Alright, alright. Better than walking, anyways.” He looks both ways before running around to the passenger side of the car and getting in. He tucks his skateboard between his legs and holds his backpack in his lap. Arthur waits for him to put on his seatbelt to start driving. “Why are you out of school so early, by the way? I thought football practice ran until, like," he pauses, clearly unfamiliar with any kind of extracurricular activity, "eternity."

"How did you know I was on the football team? Been keeping tabs on me?"

"I just assumed anyone who carried around a football to kick at people would either be a football player or an insane person. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt." He leans against the door and grins. The only thing keeping Arthur from rolling his eyes is having to pay attention to the road. His father had gifted him a Porsche for his birthday this year, and it would be a shame to wreck it so soon.

"Yes, well," Arthur says, "as it turns out, getting into fights gets you kicked off of sports teams." Merlin's eyebrows raise into his hairline.

"You're serious?"

"As the plague," Arthur says. "Just for this season. I'll have to find something else to fill the time." Another sport, perhaps, like rugby or basketball. Or maybe something academic - his father was always going on about being rounded. 

"You could be my chauffeur," Merlin says sweetly, and Arthur lets out a dry, humorless laugh.

"Oh, sure. That sounds fulfilling."

Except the next day Arthur still has nothing to do in his afternoon, and when he passes Merlin yet again he offers him a ride. That first ride wasn't terrible, and he _is_ bored.

The next week Merlin none too subtly follows Arthur to the parking lot, rather than wait for Arthur to pass him on the road.

Within the month Arthur is doing his homework at the Unicorn - where Merlin learns that Arthur is horribly dyslexic and that his high grades do not come remotely easy, and Arthur learns that Merlin sacrifices the time he could be spending studying to work and help his mother pay the bills, and a little bit of shared respect is passed between them, as well as a little bit of jealousy.

They spend every day together. They're together on weekends, at lunch, they sit in Arthur's car before school and talk about their childhoods and their plans for the future and the dreams they had the night before. 

The first time Arthur ever gets high is with Merlin, who teaches him to breathe and then laughs when Arthur breaks into a racking fit of coughs. Merlin holds the hem of his jacket sleeve between his fingers and the heel of his palm as he dabs Arthur's tears away, and it's dirty and smells like old sweat because Merlin wears it every day and has clammy hands and never washes it, and Arthur can see the flutter of the butterflies in his stomach as he does so.

Merlin takes the joint from Arthur's hand and his hand slips over Arthur's and Arthur's fingernails tingle, up into the joints of his knuckles. He watches with wide eyes as Merlin raises it to his lips, and his chest is all anxious and excited as he thinks that _his_ lips were just on that lumpy rolled up piece of paper and it's about to touch _Merlin's_ lips and, oh, it's almost like a kiss, kind of, and his eyes are so heavy and his cheeks are pinched from how long he's been dazedly smiling and he's imagining what it's like to be that joint, how nice it must be.

It's the first time Arthur ever realizes that he may have to start lying to Merlin, a little.

He used to stare at the ceiling of his car when they talked in the mornings. Now he faces the ceiling and stares at Merlin out of the corner of his eye like he's about to paint him from memory. He shoves Merlin's shoulder just so that Merlin will shove him back and he can feel the outline of Merlin's hand on him for the next half hour. He invites him to the fall carnival, as friends, so that he can have a little fantasy in the back of his mind that it's actually a date.

He never allows himself to wonder if Merlin is thinking the same thing.

He doesn't ask, if, when Merlin takes the joint back from him, he lets his hand slip over his fingers in a purposeful fumble just to have the barest touch. He doesn't contemplate how Merlin insists on winning things for him at the carnivals or debate in his mind if it's because Merlin is letting himself believe, too, that it is a date. He ignores when he feels Merlin's eyes burning into him, because it has to be wishful thinking, because Merlin would never look at him the way that Arthur looks at Merlin.

No, that would be much too good to be true.

So he swallows it. Takes what he can, the weekends spent at Merlin’s house, sleeping back to back on Merlin’s pull out couch because he doesn’t have a bed, clenching his fist in the sheets and breathing deep and focusing far too hard when Merlin shuffles in his sleep and his socked foot presses to his calf. When they wake in the morning and Arthur is under slept Merlin apologizes for his uncomfortable mattress and Arthur has to act like it wasn’t his own fault for being just slightly mad.

Arthur joins the football team again in the spring, and he throws himself into it with the hopes that his full calendar will banish this pining for good. But Merlin takes on extra hours at the Unicorn during the week so that he can come to all of his practices and all of his games, and every time he looks over his shoulder Merlin is watching raptly, cheering him on, not sitting to the side and reading or playing on his phone like all of the other mothers and siblings and girlfriends, and every time his heart clenches in his chest at what he does not have.

  
  


“I feel like everybody’s dating already,” Merlin says one afternoon at the skatepark, sitting on his board, his neck shiny with sweat. He picks gravel out of his palm with his thumbnail. Arthur has been watching as he tries to master a new trick with a dumb name that Arthur doesn’t know. He hasn’t quite gotten it yet.

Arthur looks up from Merlin’s hands to where Merlin is looking. Guinevere and Lancelot are on the other side of the park. They used to skate here, too, but lately they’ve been doing nothing but sitting on the pavement with their knees touching and talking about whatever it is they talk about all the time, their boards ignored to the side.

“We’re at that age for it,” Arthur says. Merlin hums.

“Do you ever…” he shrugs, “think about dating anybody?” Arthur’s blood roars in his ears. _Yes, all the time, every day, nonstop_ , he’d say, if he wanted Merlin to hate him.

“Are you asking if I’ve got a crush on anyone, Merlin?” He asks, stretching out Merlin’s name the way he’s taken to doing when he cracks a joke so that he doesn’t sound quite so nervous. Merlin laughs weakly. He rubs his hands on the knees of his jeans.

“Just wondering,” he says. Arthur spins his mother’s ring on his forefinger. He imagines telling Merlin everything now, how pathetically in love he is, but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth like it’s been glued there and he cannot even think of the words, let alone say them out loud. “I do,” he says.

Arthur’s heart drops. His throat tightens. It hurts.

“Really?” He asks conversationally. “Who?” Merlin clears his throat, presses his lips together and shakes his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s never gonna go anywhere.”

“Oh.”

He can’t breathe. Of course Merlin likes someone. He doesn’t know who it could be, because he only really hangs out with Arthur, but surely it’s someone that’s as interesting and funny and kind as Merlin is. Someone that isn’t always fussing about school and sports and isn’t planning for college a year early.

Arthur stares hard at a dead leaf on the ground. He doesn’t even know who this person is and he’s already comparing himself to them, trying to find his own faults and understand what’s so wrong with him that it can’t be _him_ that Merlin wants.

He comes home that night and silently opens Morgana’s bedroom door. She’s sitting in her artist’s nook painting some weird abstract thing for a competition, and her hands are covered in paint and she’s listening to music and she doesn’t hear him come in and she doesn’t see him until he kicks off his shoes next to her book case.

“Hey, loser!” She shouts over her music. “Get out of my room!”

Arthur opens up her covers and crawls into her bed. He pulls her dark purple comforter over his head and curls into a ball. All he can smell is her coconut shampoo and the coke he shared with Merlin on his breath. He wishes he were dead. The music cuts off and the door clicks shut. The bed dips with her weight.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks, her voice gruff but caring underneath it all.

“I can’t hear you,” he says, “I’m dead.” Morgana sighs. She mutters _dramatic_ under her breath and he ignores her in favor of hugging his arms around his chest.

“Is it about Merlin?” She asks very, very quietly. Arthur curls up a little tighter. In the darkness, where no one can see him, his eyes sting.

“Maybe,” he says.

“Are you fighting?”

“No,” he says. He doesn’t want to say it out loud. That makes it real. It means Arthur is in _love_ with him - and worse, it means that Merlin likes someone else, and he doesn’t even have a chance.

“Well--” Morgana cuts herself off, makes a frustrated little noise. She knocks her elbow on his hip. “Whatever it is, I’m sure you guys will work it out. He’s your best friend.”

“Yeah,” he says bitterly, “he’s _mine_.”

Morgana makes an _oh_ of understanding.

“So that’s what this is about?” She asks. “Merlin has a new friend, and you’re all jealous?”

“Shut up,” is his answer. She has it close enough that he’s embarrassed at himself. He knows he’s being silly, and that it’s stupid. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like a box truck full of bricks dumped onto his chest.

“You boys are so dumb. Just tell him how you feel.”

“I _can’t_ ,” he says, and turns his head into the mattress. “It’ll ruin everything.” Morgana doesn’t answer for a very long time. He’d think she left, if he didn’t still feel her weight at his legs.

“Arthur…” she says gently, “you aren’t jealous of a _friend_ , are you?”

And there it is, unavoidable like a truck coming for him at full speed. A tear escapes the corner of his eye and slides over his nose. 

“What am I supposed to do?” He asks, voice strangled.

“Oh, Arthur,” she says, and he sniffles and wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. She doesn’t touch him, doesn’t lean on him or hug him or offer any sort of comfort. They aren’t those kinds of siblings, they don’t do that sort of thing. But she does sigh, and say, “Stay as long as you need to,” and stands up from the bed and turns on her music again.

Arthur falls asleep in her bed, and wakes up at dinnertime, and Morgana sends him a single pitying glance from across the table but blessedly does not mention it again.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a prequel to [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26654794) that i posted forever ago. if you want an ending to this, you'll find it there!
> 
> i'm on tumblr @ [sterlingdylan](https://sterlingdylan.tumblr.com/)


End file.
